AT&T bringing gigabit fiber to LA and dozens of other metro areas

AT&T gigabit fiber on track for 14 million homes and small businesses.

AT&T today launched its gigabit fiber Internet service in parts of Los Angeles and West Palm Beach and announced another 36 metro areas that will get the service at later dates.

AT&T's "GigaPower" service is available in 20 metro areas as of now, the company said in its announcement today. It launched first in Austin, Texas, in 2013.

Much of AT&T's 22-state telephone service footprint will remain stuck with slow DSL service, but AT&T agreed to deploy fiber to at least 12.5 million customer locations within four years in exchange for government approval to buy DirecTV. Including previous deployments, AT&T will end up building to more than 14 million homes and small businesses. This will make it one of the largest fiber deployments in the country, though still short of the roughly 20 million locations passed by Verizon FiOS.

Further Reading

On average, AT&T says it takes less than a year to install service after announcing plans to move into a metro area.

AT&T generally charges $110 a month for Internet-only gigabit service, with a lower price of $70 in cities where it has to compete against Google Fiber. Both of those prices require customers to opt in to "Internet Preferences," which gives AT&T permission to examine each customer’s Web traffic in order to serve personalized ads.

AT&T didn't announce pricing for the new cities listed above, but most of them are in non-Google territories. Exceptions are San Diego, San Jose, Oklahoma City, and Louisville, which Google lists as "potential" fiber cities.